In order to ascertain whether silver really has or has not fallen in
value, it is necessary that all the facts be taken into account and the
situation looked at from a correct point of view. If a person be seated
in a boat that is headed to the stream and wishes to test whether or not
he is making headway he must keep in view not the stream, but the shore.
The occupant of a railroad car who observes a moving train on a
contiguous and parallel track, frequently thinks his own train at a
stand-still, when in fact it may be in motion.
Whenever a rise or fall appears to take place in the price of any one
article or commodity, that is to say whenever a difference takes place
in the relation which that article bears to money--all other commodities
remaining unchanged--such difference must naturally and properly be
attributed to changed conditions affecting the commodity, and not to a
change in the value of money. But wherever there is a fall in prices
throughout the whole range of commodities then it is clear that this
change is mainly due to a change in the value of money. Such however is
the force of education and habit that the masses of the people are slow
to suspect any change in the standard by which they have been accustomed
to gauge or measure all values. Indeed they find it difficult to
understand how under any circumstances any change can take place in it.
Having their eyes fixed on the standard, and on that alone, they
naturally attribute to the articles measured, and not to the standard,
any difference that may seem to arise in the relation they bear to each
other.
But the apparent is not always the real. Nothing seems more warranted by
the evidence of our senses than that the earth is a stationary object,
while the sun revolves around it. For thousands of years the world was
convinced of the truth of the geocentric theory of the universe, and
millions of men have lived and died in the confident belief that this
planet was immovably fixed in space, while the sun was a rolling and
ever-shifting body. Even yet, among the mass of mankind, so ever-present
is this impression, derived from ocular demonstration, that in spite of
the declarations of science, the world continues in common use the
phrases which originally described the process that took place, as men
understood it; hence we speak of the "rising" and the "setting" of the
sun. In the same way we speak of the rise or fall in the value of
commodities, without being particular to note whether the change that
has taken place is strictly a change in the value of the article itself
or a change in the money with which its value is measured. Perhaps I can
best illustrate my meaning by an allegory: